Maglev Trains Float on Air at 374 MPH. The Root Is a French Inventor's Model in 1914.

Key Takeaways

• •Emile Bachelet's 1912 patent described electromagnetic levitation for transportation — 110+ years ago
• •His 1914 London demo showed a model hovering 1cm above an 11-meter rail — Winston Churchill attended
• •Japan's L0 Series maglev holds the speed record: 603 km/h (374 mph), set in 2015
• •Shanghai's Transrapid (2004) is the only commercial high-speed maglev in daily operation
• •Japan's Chuo Shinkansen will connect Tokyo to Nagoya in 40 minutes (286 km) using superconducting maglev

Timeline

There is a train in Japan that has no wheels. It doesn't roll. It floats. Four inches above the track, held aloft by superconducting magnets cooled to negative 269 degrees Celsius — four degrees above absolute zero. At that temperature, electrical resistance vanishes and the magnets become powerful enough to lift a 30-ton vehicle and accelerate it to 603 kilometers per hour.

That's 374 miles per hour. Faster than a Formula 1 car at top speed. Faster than most commercial aircraft at cruising altitude. And it does this with no friction, no contact with the rail, no wheels, no engine in the traditional sense. Just magnets.

The concept sounds like science fiction. It was proposed in 1912.

THE FRENCH INVENTOR

A train that floats. No wheels. No friction. No contact with the track. Emile Bachelet demonstrated this in 1914. Churchill watched. It took the world 110 years to take the idea seriously.

— ROOT•BYTE

Emile Bachelet was born in France in 1863 and emigrated to the United States in the 1880s, where he worked as an electrician. He was a tinkerer, an inventor, a man who saw the future in electromagnetic forces.

In March 1912, Bachelet received US Patent No. 1,020,942 for a "levitating transmitting apparatus." The patent described a system of alternating electromagnetic fields that could lift and propel a vehicle along a guideway without physical contact. No wheels. No friction. No moving parts in the track.

Bachelet built a working model. In 1914, he took it to London and demonstrated it to the British Admiralty. A one-meter-long aluminum vehicle hovered one centimeter above an 11-meter guide rail, propelled by the electromagnetic fields beneath it. Among the audience was Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty.

The demonstration was successful. The model worked. Churchill was reportedly intrigued. The press covered it enthusiastically, with headlines about "flying trains" that would travel at 300 miles per hour.

And then nothing happened. World War I broke out months later. Bachelet's funding evaporated. He died in 1946 without ever seeing his invention realized at scale. The idea of magnetic levitation transportation lay dormant for decades.

THE GERMAN AND JAPANESE RENAISSANCE

The concept was revived in the 1930s by Hermann Kemper, a German engineer who received a patent in 1934 for a levitated train using electromagnetic suspension (EMS). Kemper's design used conventional electromagnets in the train to attract toward iron rails from below — the train wraps around the track and pulls itself upward.

Germany eventually built the Transrapid system, a series of increasingly capable test vehicles starting with the Transrapid 01 in 1971. The technology matured over decades and found its first (and so far only) commercial application in Shanghai, China, where a Transrapid maglev line has been operating since 2004, connecting Pudong Airport to the city center at speeds up to 431 km/h.

But the most ambitious maglev program has always been Japan's.

Japan's approach uses a different technology: electrodynamic suspension (EDS) with superconducting magnets. Instead of attracting the train upward (like the German EMS), the Japanese system uses the principle of repulsion. Superconducting magnets on the train create powerful fields that induce currents in the guideway, generating a repulsive force that lifts the vehicle.

The advantage is stability — the faster the train moves, the stronger the levitation force becomes. The disadvantage is that the magnets must be cooled to near absolute zero, requiring complex cryogenic systems.

Japan has been testing maglev vehicles since the 1970s. In 1979, the ML500 test vehicle reached 517 km/h. The technology improved steadily: the MLX01 hit 581 km/h in 2003. And in April 2015, the L0 Series set the current world speed record for a manned vehicle on a rail: 603 km/h (374 mph), on the Yamanashi test track.

THE CHUO SHINKANSEN

Japan is building something that Bachelet dreamed of in 1912: a commercial maglev line connecting major cities.

The Chuo Shinkansen will run from Tokyo to Nagoya, a distance of 286 kilometers, in approximately 40 minutes. The existing bullet train (Tokaido Shinkansen) makes the same trip in about 100 minutes. Eventually, the line will extend to Osaka, connecting Japan's three largest metropolitan areas at speeds above 500 km/h.

The project has been plagued by delays, primarily due to construction difficulties in the Southern Alps tunnel section. The original 2027 opening date has been pushed back. But the technology works — that was proven decades ago. The challenges are engineering and political, not physical.

WHY WE DON'T HAVE MORE MAGLEV

If maglev technology has existed since 1914 and been practically demonstrated since the 1970s, why isn't it everywhere?

Cost. Maglev infrastructure is phenomenally expensive. You can't use existing rail tracks. Every mile requires a custom-built guideway with embedded electromagnetic coils. The Chuo Shinkansen is estimated to cost over $100 billion for 286 kilometers. Conventional high-speed rail, which is fast enough for most applications, is dramatically cheaper.

Compatibility. Maglev trains can't share tracks with conventional trains. This means building an entirely separate network — new stations, new maintenance facilities, new everything.

Politics. Infrastructure projects of this scale require decades of political commitment. Bachelet had the concept in 1912. Germany started building in the 1970s. Japan won't finish its first commercial line until at least the late 2020s. That's over a century from concept to commute.

The irony of maglev is that the physics has been solved for decades. What's hard isn't making a train float. It's convincing humans to build the track.

Emile Bachelet showed Churchill a floating model in 1914. One hundred and thirteen years later, we're still building the track.

Enjoy This Article?

RootByte is 100% independent - no paywalls, no corporate sponsors. Your support helps fund education, therapy for special needs kids, and keeps the research going.

How did this make you feel?

Recommended Gear

Keep Reading

Mobility Tech

Ride-Sharing Was Invented During World War I, Not by Uber

5 min read

Mobility Tech

The E-Scooter Invasion Traces Back to a 1915 'Autoped' That Suffragettes Rode

5 min read

Mobility Tech

The Electric Car Was Invented in 1832. Then Oil Killed It for 100 Years.

9 min read